Mental Model
Weekly Review Protocol (GTD-Inspired)
A comprehensive weekly maintenance protocol for keeping your personal and professional systems current, based on David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology
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Mental Model
Wei Qi (Go) Strategic Thinking
Wei Qi (Go in Japan) is a 2,500-year-old game embodying Chinese strategic philosophy
Mental Model
Weigh second- and third-order consequences.
Consider effects produced by an action’s initial effects, including how people may respond and what conditions may change
Mental Model
Weighted Scoring Model Protocol
A structured protocol for making multi-criteria decisions by scoring and weighting the factors that matter
Cognitive Move
Weights
Score each logged result by how much it should actually move you. Ask how much more expected that result was under one rival than the others, and cut its pull if the data source was weak, secondhand, or measured something other than your claim.
Mental Model
What Does the Frog’s Eye Tell the Frog’s Brain?
Lettvin and colleagues showed feature-sensitive processing in frog retinal outputs
Mental Model
What Is a Deepity?
A deepity gains apparent profundity by moving between a modest defensible reading and a stronger, unsupported or false reading
Mental Model
What Is Culture And Why Do We Care
Culture includes socially learned practices, knowledge, norms, and meanings that shape and are shaped by interaction
Cognitive Move
what-if run
One set of parameters, one run, one curve. You fix every input, start it, and read the single future those inputs produce. The value is not in that curve but in the rerun. Change one number, run it again, and the distance between the two curves is the answer to the question you actually had. Keep the changed input visible next to the output, or the reader sees a result with no idea what produced it.
Mental Model
Whataboutism Pattern (Tu Quoque Extended)
The deflection technique of responding to criticism by pointing to the critic's own failings or an unrelated problem rather than addressing the original point
Mental Model
When Does Behavior Matter
Behavior matters to the extent that changing plausible decision rules changes the specified system outcome under its institutions and constraints
Mental Model
When Does Speciation Occur?
Speciation can involve gradual lineage divergence and partial reproductive isolation, but mechanisms and species criteria vary, and some reproductive barriers arise rapidly
Mental Model
Whistleblower Decision Model
Whistleblowing involves reporting organizational wrongdoing through channels outside the normal chain of command—and it represents one of the highest-stakes individual decisions anyone can make
Cognitive Move
whiteboard photo
A photograph of something a group drew live. It carries the marks of the room that made it, which is why people trust it, and it is frozen at that moment, which is why it goes stale. The date matters more than the drawing. Without one, an old picture keeps circulating as if it were current.
Mental Model
Who Is the Author of Spamlet?
Dennett imagines a constructed creator, Spakesheare, producing a play, Spamlet, and asks where the creative design work occurs
Mental Model
Why Do Some Countries Not Grow
Explaining slow growth or persistent poverty requires a defined outcome and evidence about relevant constraints and mechanisms
Mental Model
Wicked Problems vs Tame Problems
Horst Rittel's distinction between tame problems (well-defined, with known solutions—like chess) and wicked problems (incomplete definitions, contradictory constraints, no stopping rule, and no 'correct' solution—like po…
Mental Model
Widowmakers, Mitochondrial Eve, and Retrospective Coronations
Dennett examines properties defined by distant or later relations, including widowhood and a maternal-line common ancestor
Mental Model
Wilderness Effect on Perspective
Exposure to vast natural landscapes—oceans, mountains, night skies—triggers a cognitive-emotional response psychologists call 'awe,' which systematically shifts perspective
Mental Model
WIll China Continue to Grow
The China growth question is a case for applying and comparing economic models
Mental Model
Willpower Conservation Strategy Protocol
A protocol for structuring your day, environment, and decisions to minimize willpower expenditure, based on the research finding that self-control is a depletable resource (ego depletion theory)